Good Tuesday, everybody. I’m Joe Hesch, your host for tonight’s dVerse Open Link Night.

Almost every morning–while I drive to work and while my computer is booting up–my mind and the computer’s brain run through all their calisthenics, diagnostics and burbles, and a poem happens to run through and from my mind to a sheet of paper.

Sometimes it starts from something I saw that morning, or it bubbles from a memory or other sensory charge that flashed to me in the previous 24 hours. I grab my mechanical pencil (my poet’s weapon of choice) and write on a legal pad until I come to its end, not caring too much what happens, discovering (or more likely stumbling) over ideas and impressions along the way.

And when I’m finished with that draft poem, I tend not to change too much before I share it with you. I know, it sounds like a terribly unprofessional literary process, but it’s damned spontaneous, from my gut and mine. While I’m reading it one last time before I hit the Publish button, I try to understand its origin once again, and how it came from ethereal poof to that final period at the end of the last line. Then I leave it for you to figure out, because I don’t own it anymore.

You do the same thing each Tuesday when you link to the pub for Open Link Night.

While I wonder about where my own poems were inspired, I wonder just as much or more about where yours were born. The poem I’m linking today was inspired by a walk into my backyard late Saturday afternoon. The sun was heading to California behind the new houses and remaining old trees. Jet contrails of varying vintages crisscrossed the blue autumn sky. That image stirred something in me that I didn’t quite understand. Nevertheless, I pulled out my phone and took some photos of that sky and I registered some images in my mind’s eye, too. Contrails of Memory is the result of that inspiration.

You didn’t need to know that. My poem, just as yours, doesn’t need to explain itself. It just IS. But each week, well over 100 poets display similar personal and artistic interpretations of some thought, image, or memory. Often, I would love to know what your inspiration was for your OLN poem. So, if you feel like it, maybe you could make a note of your inspiration at the end of this week’s poem or leave a comment about it at the end of our welcoming essay today.

Think of this as the nosey wonderings of a long-fallen journalist, the hmmmm between your lines by a poetic yenta, an artistic busybody’s peek through the garret keyhole.

The most important thing of all this is you wrote the poem and have chosen to share with us. Here’s how you can do it.

• Link the poem you’d like to share–old or new, on any topic (one per blog, please) by clicking on the Mr.Linky button just below.
• This opens a new screen where you’ll enter your information, and where you also choose links to read.
• Once you have pasted your poem’s blog url and entered your name, simply click submit.
• Don’t forget to let your readers know where you’re linking up and encourage them to participate by including a link to dVerse in your blog post. (Something I too often forget to do, so this is a reminder for me, too.)
• Visit as many other poems as you like, commenting and liking as you see fit.
• Spread the word on the poems you enjoy if you’d like. Tweet and Pin and otherwise Share on the social media of your choice.
• Finally, enjoy! Remember, we are here for each other. Thanks to all of you for sharing your brilliant creations.